A gaming device includes a data processing system and software that creates a virtual environment using which a user can perform physical motions or movements to simulate a game. Presently, many gaming devices in the form of gaming consoles are available, using which users can play simulated baseball, golf, bowling, skiing, tennis, boxing, and numerous other games.
Many gaming devices incorporate aspects of the real world games in their virtual environments in order to provide a life-like gaming experience to the users. For example, in the virtual environments of many games that are playable on such gaming devices, the graphics are becoming increasingly realistic, including three dimensional rendering of objects, structures, places, and users/actors. Images of users and objects in such games also move with increasingly smooth motions that resemble the fluidity of the corresponding motions of users and objects in the real world.
Such a virtual environment is also commonly known as a virtual world, or a virtual space. A virtual environment is an electronically simulated environment in which virtual creatures move about and perform actions similar to how real creatures would in a comparable real world environment.
Users playing in virtual environments use virtual equipment to perform their gaming movements. For example, a user playing golf in a virtual environment performs a golf swing motion with an imaginary club and an imaginary ball in the user's living room. A gaming device translates the user's golf swing motion in the user's living room into a corresponding motion performed by a representation of the user on a virtual golf course in the virtual environment. The representation of the user is depicted to hold a graphical club and the golf swing motion of the representation of the user causes the graphical club to strike a graphical ball on the virtual golf course.
Many games can be played as single-player games, multi-player games, or as a choice of either single or multiple players in such virtual environments. As described above, a user performs physical motions in the three-dimensional (3D) space of the real or physical world to simulate a motion in the virtual environment of the game. It is easy for a user to get engrossed in the virtual environment of the game and lose track of the user's actual physical location in the 3D space. When a user moves about and performs game-related motions in the 3D space, a risk exists that the user may collide with a physical object located in that 3D space or with another user present in the same 3D space.